


Three Ravens

by AngelQueen



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Background Relationships, Canon Compliant, Dialogue, Episode Related, Episode: s08e05 The Bells, Gen, Minor Jon Snow/Daenerys Targaryen, Missing Scene, Of course there's shady shit, Post-Episode: s08e06 The Iron Throne, Season/Series 08, Talking about the shady shit people do, This is Westeros
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2020-04-05 05:32:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19042129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngelQueen/pseuds/AngelQueen
Summary: The raven comes from Dragonstone, some weeks after Jon left to lead the armies south.





	Three Ravens

**Author's Note:**

> Missing scenes from **Season 8 Episode 5** _The Bells_ and **Season 8 Episode 6** _The Iron Throne_.

The raven comes from Dragonstone, some weeks after Jon left to lead the armies south. In truth, Sansa had expected something to come sooner or later. Her strategy is not one that will remain quiet for very long.

_**Sansa** , Varys is dead, having committed treason against the Queen. We will speak more of this when I return. **Jon**_

Sansa can feel the icy fury in those few words, but she refuses to flinch. Yes, she broke her promise to Jon, but his parentage is just too good an opportunity to let slip her by. Daenerys Targaryen will never allow the North its freedom, will never let them go their own way without bowing their heads to whomever sits on that cursed lump of metal in King’s Landing. She is too controlling, too determined, too _foreign_ to let anyone be outside of her dominions.

Jon, though… Jon is a man raised by Eddard Stark, perhaps one of the most honorable and honored men in all the Seven Kingdoms. Eddard Stark took his sister’s son, who had also been the son of his enemy, and raised him as his own, taught him honor and goodness. Jon, whatever his distaste for politics, knows the Seven Kingdoms, and he has a heart full of love and kindness. He could rule, and rule well enough, but also see the wisdom of letting the North chart its own course, under her leadership of course. That he does not _want_ to is neither here nor there. In the face of the needs of the Seven Kingdoms, Jon’s own wants must come second.

The whispers begin to spread toward Winterfell, that Jon is the trueborn son of Rhaegar Targaryen and thus the rightful heir of the Iron Throne, and Sansa knows that, though the effort cost him his life, Varys’ little birds have done their work.

* * *

Sansa isn’t expecting another raven to come from the south so soon after Jon’s message from Dragonstone. In fact, she is deep in her work of taking stock of their supplies now that Winterfell no longer needs to feed an army when Maester Wolkan all but bursts into her solar. 

“Maester?” she asks, ready to chide the man for such an abrupt entry. The moment she takes in his grey face, his wide, glassy eyes, the scolding words die on her lips and something in her stomach drops. “What is it?” she demands. 

“A-a raven, Lady Stark,” he stutters, holding it out to her. “From Ser Davos.”

_Dark wings, dark words._

She snatches it quickly from his hand and unrolls the scroll of paper. Her eyes fly over the hastily written words.

_**Lady Sansa** , Daenerys Targaryen felled the Greyjoy fleet and the walls of King’s Landing, but then set the city itself to torch with dragon fire, refusing to accept the signal of the city bells ringing as a surrender. The entire city burned, with mayhap a few hundred survivors. Several hours later, Daenerys was fatally stabbed by Jon Snow, who then surrendered to Grey Worm of the Unsullied. Drogon melted the Iron Throne and took Daenerys’ body, though we know not where to. I urge you to come south, quickly. The Unsullied are calling for Jon Snow’s head, but Lady Arya has convinced them to wait, to assemble a Great Council in the Dragon Pit to pass judgment upon him and upon Tyrion Lannister, who was accused of treason before Daenerys’ death. Other messages have been sent throughout the Seven Kingdoms. **Ser Davos Seaworth**_

Bile rises up in Sansa’s throat and it takes all her self-control to keep it locked behind her teeth. The population of King’s Landing is, _was_ , near to half a million people, mostly smallfolk. That only a few hundred are still alive after having the city _burned by a dragon_ …

_I knew it. I knew she was a madwoman,_ she thinks as her feet begin to take her out the door. _I_ told _Jon that she would bring nothing but misery to the Seven Kingdoms, but he was too blinded, kept saying to give her a chance, to see the greatness that he saw in her. What greatness is there in setting hundreds of thousands of people on fire?!_

Those thoughts carry her through the keep, but as she steps outside, her eyes and direction turn towards the godswood. Bran is there. It’s where he almost always is. 

It’s then that a dozen different thoughts snap into place in her mind, and Sansa quickens her pace, entering the godswood and pushing deeper into its depths. 

Even in her hurry, however, she cannot help but pause on entering the clearing, memories of what she’d found here after the battle against the dead fighting with thoughts of the current situation. Theon, dead on the ground, his eyes staring blankly toward the sky. Mounds and mounds of corpses around the edge of the clearing, with smaller piles of dead Ironborn and Karstark archers – and learning afterward that Alys Karstark had been lying unconscious under several of their corpses, their deaths having shielded her from being torn apart by the wights. Something in her twists in horror, but Sansa ignores it, focusing on the lone figure sitting by the heart tree, huddled under thick furs as he stares up at the tree’s weeping face. 

“Did you know this would happen?” she demands, not bothering to greet him. He probably knew she was coming anyway. 

Bran slowly turns his gaze from the heart tree to meet her own. His expression is, as always, blank. 

“Did you know what she’d do when she left here?” Sansa continues. “Did you know she would have her dragon burn King’s Landing? Did you know she was mad?”

“No.”

For several moments, she can only gape at him. _How could you_ not _know_?! You’re the Three-Eyed Raven! He has been saying that ever since Meera Reed brought him back to Winterfell. She still doesn’t understand what it truly means. The repository of human memory? He can see the past of anyone he chooses. So how could he not have seen Daenerys’ insanity, her fixation on the Iron Throne and her family’s so-called legacy?

Weariness falls upon her shoulders like a sodden cloak, and Sansa shifts over to sit down on a nearby boulder. “I did,” she murmurs as she adjusts her skirts to settle more comfortably about her legs. “I saw it. Jon was blinded by love, but it was plain as day to me.”

Bran cocks his head, and he stares at her as if she were a mildly interesting puzzle for him to decipher. “Is that what you saw?” he asks. 

Sansa blinks. Is he, with all of his purported abilities, just as blind as Jon? “Yes, of course.”

He doesn’t offer an immediate response, merely leaning back in his wheeled chair. She watches him, sensing that he is gathering his thoughts.

“While I was beyond the Wall, I learned to see so much, in so many places. I saw Jon and all the lessons he learned as part of the Night’s Watch. I saw Arya and her quest to become no one, but never quite able to let go of being Arya Stark of Winterfell. I saw Robb, winning every battle he fought, but losing his heart and, then, the war. I saw our mother do everything she possibly could, only for it to amount to nothing when the Freys cut her throat.”

Sansa shivers. She has heard from more than one source of the details of her mother and Robb’s fates. Joffrey had certainly loved describing it in detail before he died is own horrible death. 

“But I saw someone else too. I saw a young girl with beautiful dreams and a kind heart. I saw her beaten down, humiliated, betrayed over and over again. I saw her slowly rebuild herself into someone harder, stronger. Determined leave the world a better place than how she found it, and to take back what had been ripped from her and her family.”

Despite the gravity of the situation, Sansa can’t help but smile. “Me,” she says quietly.

Bran blinks, focusing his fathomless eyes on her. “Yes,” he says slowly, “that does describe you, but I was talking about someone else.”

She blinks. “Who?” Who in these years had suffered as she has, walked the same paths? Robb had had no ladies of the Westerlands as hostages, and even if he had, he never would have permitted them to be stripped and beaten by grown men –

“Daenerys Targaryen.” His voice is still completely even, as though he is discussing the weather. “You and she are not so different.”

Sansa freezes. There is a discordant screech ringing in her ears, like someone trying to play a harp that is horribly out of tune. Then on the heels of that sound, rage also rises in her breast. “I am _nothing_ like her!” she snarls.

Bran doesn’t flinch. “Are you?”

“Of course not!” she shouts, leaping to her feet. “She is a monster! A monster who hatched more monsters! I knew it the moment I heard that she’d burned Randyll Tarly and his son alive –”

“You fed Ramsay Bolton alive to his hounds.” There is no judgment in his tone, merely a statement of fact, but she feels the sting nonetheless. No one has ever judged her for what she did to Ramsay. Many in fact applauded her for it. Even Jon had smiled, just a bit.

“That’s different,” she counters. “Ramsay was a rabid beast. Lord Tarly –”

“Once threatened to have Sam murdered if he did not join the Night’s Watch,” Bran cut her off. “He betrayed his liege lady and sacked her home, killing her household. There were Tyrell cousins still in Highgarden at that time, children mostly, and he had them all killed. He stole not just the wealth of the Reach and gave it to the Lannisters, but also the family treasures of the Tyrells, keeping them for himself.” Bran’s expression remains as impassive as ever. “His actions were no different than that of the Boltons, and he was crushed beneath the boot of someone more powerful, just Ramsay was.”

Sansa clenches her jaw. She had not known the extent of Lord Tarly’s deeds. She knows he had sided with the Lannisters and attacked Highgarden, but she had not known that Margaery’s cousins had been killed in the sack. She had not known what had been done to Sam. When she had first heard of Highgarden’s fall, she had seen it only in the light that the Lannisters were gaining power again, and that the invading Dragon Queen that Jon was negotiating with was losing her bid for power. 

Nonetheless, she isn’t prepared to let go of her initial point. “Daenerys was still mad,” she insists. “Just like her father, only worse! How many died in King’s Landing as a result of her insanity?!”

“She was not mad when she left Winterfell, Sansa,” Bran says. “Upset, disturbed, yes. She had lost so many of her people, as well as Ser Jorah, who she cared deeply for and relied on. She had also learned that Jon’s claim to the Iron Throne was superior to hers, which would rob her of a goal that had been a part of her life since she was a small child. Something she did not know how to handle.” He pauses, then shakes his head. “No, the madness did not come until later.”

“When, then?” she demands. “When the bells rang and she decided instead of honoring a surrender, she would burn innocent men, women, and children alive?”

He does not reply at once, merely staring at her. He is, again, as emotionless as he always is, and yet Sansa cannot help but feel that he is exasperated with her. “There is no single moment where she went from sane to insane, Sansa. It was a path she walked. Or was pushed down.”

Sansa stares at him. What is _that_ supposed to mean? Targaryens were all mad, one way or another! A man being called the Mad King spoke for itself. Even if Prince Rhaegar had not kidnapped and raped Aunt Lyanna to death, that he even _thought_ that eloping with her after annulling his first marriage – thus rendering his two children bastards – was in any way acceptable did not give Sansa any good opinion of his mental state. “What do you mean?”

Yet again, he does not respond immediately, but something in his demeanor shifts. His eyes seem to change from their normal listlessness to something else, something colder, sterner. In that moment, Sansa doesn’t feel like she is looking at her brother. There is no Stark in him at all now, but someone, something older and far more powerful. 

“Perhaps it started when the knowledge of Jon’s parentage began to spread, despite Jon having all those who knew swear an oath before a heart tree to remain forever silent about it.” Ice drips from his every word, and her heart freezes a little more as they fall from his lips one by one. “Then her advisor took this information as an invitation to betray yet another monarch. Then Rhaegal was knocked from the sky, and Missandei of Naath was beheaded at the top of the walls of King’s Landing. Then, when she was able to claim the city with minimal loss of life by destroying the Greyjoy fleet and the scorpions mounted upon the city walls, despite her advisors all asserting that if dragon fire appeared anywhere near the city, it would annihilate everyone.”

Sansa wants to speak, tries franticly to find the words to justify herself as she sinks back down onto the rock. This cannot not be her fault, it cannot not! She had done everything right – put words into the right ears, let the words spread, and let the nature of the lords and ladies of the Seven Kingdoms take its course. Jon would be proclaimed King by right of his claim through Rhaegar Targaryen, and Sansa would then convince him to let the North have its freedom to make its own way.

But the message. She looks down at it where it is still clutched in her gloved hands, her eyes going over Ser Davos’ shaky scrawl.

_… entire city burned, with mayhap a few hundred survivors…_

_Daenerys stabbed fatally by Jon Snow, who then surrendered to Grey Worm of the Unsullied..._

Jon killed her. Jon, who has been so enamored of her ever since he brought her, her dragons, and her armies to Winterfell and made little secret of it. 

Jon, the shield that guards the realms of men, stabbed the woman he’d sworn himself to, in order to save those very realms. Daenerys would not have stopped with King’s Landing, Sansa knows this. She would have burned everything and everyone in her path, everyone she viewed as an enemy or obstacle. Sansa herself would have been among them. Daenerys knew she had no love for her, no intention of ever bending the knee.

Jon Snow, born Aegon Targaryen, killed Daenerys Targaryen. His lover, his queen, his aunt.

Jon took on the mantle of a queenslayer, of a _kinslayer_.

Sansa remembers, then, what her father thought of Jaime Lannister, the Kingslayer. How he was devoid of honor, faithless, a murderer who deserved nothing but to be spat upon. Now Jon, the boy he raised as his own, his sister’s only child, the one he dishonored himself and his wife for, has fallen into the exact same position.

All because Sansa herself set the stage for it to happen.

“Is… is this really all my fault?” The words come out small, barely more than a whisper. Sansa can’t help but feel like she is that little girl in King’s Landing again – a stupid little bird, blind to everything that truly matters. Had her fervent desire to see the North as a free and independent kingdom led her to sacrifice Jon?

“Your hands are not clean, Sansa,” Bran tells her. “Many people and many things contributed to the fall of Daenerys Stormborn, and you must count yourself among them, but the responsibility does not fall solely on you.”

Slowly, she nods. More sins she can lay at her feet, sins she will one day answer for, in death or in life. Certainly, she doesn’t doubt that her father will one day call her to account.

But for the moment, she must focus on the here and now. Jon is a prisoner, facing death at the hands of Daenerys’ armies. She will not have it. Enough of the Starks have been lost. 

“I must go south,” she tells Bran, standing up. “Ser Davos and Arya are with the Northern army, but they’ve summoned all of the great lords and ladies to hear the charges against Jon and Tyrion.”

“Yes,” Bran agrees, “we must go south.”

Sansa stops. “We? You are coming too?” she asks, shocked. Bran going south has never occurred to her. Even if Father had once meant for him to come with them to King’s Landing so long ago, she could never imagine him in King’s Landing, or anywhere south of the Neck to be honest. 

He nods. “Yes,” he replies, and now he sounds… tired, weary, as though there is some great task ahead of him that he must complete. “Things have changed. I did not long for this, but with Daenerys dead and Jon imprisoned for her death, there is but one other path ahead.”

Sansa blinks in confusion, but does not let that stop her from pushing her brother’s wheeled chair out of the godswood. She will no doubt understand in time.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, before anyone starts shouting at me, let me say this: this story was not an attempt to bash Sansa. I do like her character. But let's face it: in this final season, she did some seriously shady shit. My biggest problem with a lot of it is that _no one fucking called her on it_. Arya, the character who back in the day was always the one who saw through Sansa's bullshit, is suddenly her biggest fan after they bonded over taking down Littlefinger in Season 7. So this story was my way of working out my issues, and given that Bran was rather useless this season despite how he's supposed to be this magical badass, I figured why not let it be him?
> 
> And speaking of Bran, as much as I and so many others joke (sort of) about Bran setting everything up to make himself King of the ~~Seven~~ Six Kingdoms at the eleventh hour, I honestly don't think that was the case in-universe. I think that he had Sam tell Jon about his true heritage on the eve of the Long Night just in case he and Sam were killed in the battle. Jon needed to know that, however little he wanted it, he was a viable candidate for the Iron Throne under the traditional terms of succession. Once the Night King and the White Walkers were defeated, there were a couple of potential paths forward. My thought is that Bran's preferred path would be with Jon on the throne with Dany (if they could get Jon to get over his incest issues). It would combine their claims, and if they could get Jon to step up and be an actual partner to Dany instead of rolling over for her all the time, then they could handle things very well together, a mixture of passion and caution. But because of a myriad of things, that didn't happen. 
> 
> Instead, Dany loses her mind piece by piece. Jon wallows in his incest issues and decides that the best way to show Dany that he does not covet the Iron Throne is by rolling over and submitting to her every whim (outside the bedroom, of course). The end result is that we have Dany killing half-a-million people, and Jon knifing her in the heart before she can set everyone else in Westeros, if not the world, on fire. However justified Jon was in killing Dany at that point, it still takes him out of the running to be the next ruler. In turn, this leaves Bran to try and find someone else to take the crown, and given all the war and destruction since the death of Jon Arryn, he is sorely lacking in candidates. Tyrion has the mind for it, but no one will accept a kinslaying dwarf. Sansa doesn't give a shit about what happens south of the Neck so long as it doesn't harm the North. Edmure Tully and Robin Arryn... no. The other kingdoms won't accept the new Prince of Dorne (particularly when we don't even know who he is). Gendry is Robert's son, but he has no experience in ruling, and cannot read and write, which leaves him ripe for manipulation.
> 
> That leaves Bran himself. He cannot be a warrior but with his abilities, he can stop wars before they start. He has no personal experience in ruling, but he can draw upon the memories and actions of any ruler in history, which gives him a kind of experience that no one else can match. In the respect, with the right advisors to delegate certain things to, Bran really is the best candidate for King at this point. It's not what he wanted, but with literally no one else left, he will do it, however reluctantly.
> 
> And wow. I did not mean to ramble on that long. Hope you enjoyed the story!


End file.
